Sequoia Yacht Club Upgrades Junior Sailing and Learn-to-Sail Fleet

The South Bay Port of Redwood City became the center of multiple youth-sailing programs on the morning of Saturday, April 25, when over 20 high schools competed in a NorCal divisional regatta on the same waters as the Sequoia Yacht Club’s Junior Sailing/Learn to Sail program. Andrew Lesslie, the new organizer of Sequoia YC’s youth sailing, has done an admirable job of upgrading their fleet to include four new RS Zests to add to existing El Toros and Lasers, and create staffing to serve the club’s grade-school students.

The spirit of cooperation among instructors, parents and students was evident in the well-coordinated effort to rig and splash the boats, which consisted of two Zests and five El Toros. Recognition that the sooner boats are in the water the longer will be the instruction on the water, kept everyone moving quickly to the docks, which were congested with high-school competitors.

Latitude 38 was invited to join the instruction RIB for the two Zests, which were crewed by four grade-school kids who were on these boats for the first time. Lead instructor Daniil Gurenkov, a senior at Carlmont High School with US Sailing Level 1 certification, towed the boats out to uncrowded waters. Here he set up two marks to allow the crews to reach back and forth with good boat speed and minimum tacking in 8–10 knots of breeze.

For those of us who learned our sailing in the cockpit, it was truly amazing to see Daniil transmit basic sailing skills from the Sequoia YC RIB to kids in the Zests, who were often at very different locations on his reaching course.

Using a friendly, supportive tone of voice, Daniil managed to convey:

– proper positioning of each kid on the boat to keep it balanced and sailing flat;
– proper use of the tiller extension with one hand, while trimming the main with the other;
– proper trim of the mainsail using telltales on the leech of the main;
– proper rounding of the marks by tacking rather than jibing — each kid wearing a helmet to protect against a swinging boom;
– right-of-way instruction to avoid transversing four- and eight-man crew shells by aiming at their sterns.

In addition to the talent required to provide sailing instruction, Daniil had to acquire excellent boat-handling skills to maneuver the RIB alongside the Zests, where he occasionally had to reach into the Zest to correct a problem!

Sailing with crew requires collaboration that we are gratified to see being executed so well among the instructors, students and parents of this very well-organized juniors program.